Intelligibility of stop-plosive and fricative consonants produced by tracheoesophageal speakers in quiet and noise

J Acoust Soc Am. 2020 Jun;147(6):4075. doi: 10.1121/10.0001410.

Abstract

Despite functional levels of postlaryngectomy communication, individuals who undergo total laryngectomy and tracheoesophageal (TE) puncture voice restoration continue to experience significant communication difficulties in noisy environments. In order to identify and further characterize TE speakers' intelligibility in noise, the current auditory-perceptual study investigated stop-plosive and fricative intelligibility of TE speech in quiet and in the presence of multi-talker noise. Eighteen listeners evaluated monosyllabic consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words produced by 14 TE speakers using an open-response paradigm. The findings indicate that overall speaker intelligibility was significantly lower in noise. However, further examination of these data revealed a differential effect of noise on intelligibility according to manner and phoneme position. While overall error patterns remained consistent across conditions, the voicing distinction was affected differentially by manner class and articulatory position. The present investigation provides valuable insights into the influence of non-normal and degraded voice signals and differential perceptual patterns when comparing TE speech intelligibility in quiet and noise.

MeSH terms

  • Humans
  • Laryngectomy
  • Noise / adverse effects
  • Speech Intelligibility
  • Speech Perception*
  • Speech, Alaryngeal*
  • Voice*